Lucha VaVoom

clay

oliver is bored. oliver yearns for adventure.

instructional queefing video

um, this floating hedgehog video makes me rethink EVERYTHING

"I think he likes how the water looks from underneath." That is exactly the kind of thing I would say. The constant commentary of southern-accented baby talk from these ladies just makes all my sensibilities go in a tizzy.

Other highlights:

"that's what happens to people who fall asleep in the water, they get sunburned. Do you want to get sunburned by the bathroom light?"

"be careful not to get water in your ears"

finally publically sanctioned

despite the many aspects of san diego that are less than ideal, its geographic participation in the state of california's new gay marriage law makes me happy to be here.

let's go

gringo chilaquiles and baguette french toast

perfect blend of sweet and savory!

fractured wrist gets a lot of attention

hiring a hooker to date rape her

link

water balls

Department of Water and Power workers are emptying out bales of plastic balls in the Ivanhoe reservoir in Los Angeles on Monday, June 9, 2008. Department of Water and Power released about 400,000 black plastic 4-inch balls as the first installment of approximately 3 million to form a floating cover over 7 acres of the reservoir to protect the water from sunlight. When sunlight mixes with the bromide and chlorine in Ivanhoe's water, the carcinogen bromate can form. (Irfan Khan/AP)
link

Micah's pots and pans

micah made this picture today during an arts and crafts session with me.

this is his kitchen; i'm inspired to cook!

Steep, wing-burning falls

I've been "studying" popular culture with a new drive and vengeance. It's been a gargantuan task to metacognitively distill WHAT exactly makes me feel like i come from another planet. Not only am I appallingly ignorant on the specific who's and what's of this celebrity plasma we breath in, but I am, even more confusedly, completely baffled by the underlying STRUCTURES of tabloids and gossip. It may seem ingenuous to confess to such a basic level of outsider-ness, but in this proclamation i am most earnest. Reading US magazine on the toilet has proven to be one of THE most trippy things I do.

I've been reading Salman Rushdie's FURY, and ran across this gem of a paragraph. It is a perfect synthesis of the larger mechanism that has taken grip of our world in the last few decades, and that I have been oh-so-late to hitch a ride on.

This was the period in which the two great industries of the future were being born. The industry of culture would in the coming decades replace that of ideology, becoming "primary" in the way that economics used to be, and spawn a whole new nomenklatura of cultural commissars, a new breed of apparatchiks engaged in great ministries of definition, exclusion, revision, and persecution, and a dialectic based on the new dualism of defense and offense. And if culture was the world's new secularism, then its new religion was fame, and the industry- or, better, the church- of celebrity would give meaningful work to a new ecclesia, a proselytizing mission designed to conquer this new frontier, building this glitzy celluloid vehicles and its cathode-ray rockets, developing new fuels out of gossip, flying the Chosen Ones to the stars. And to fulfill the darker requirements of the new faith, there were occasional human sacrifices, and steep, wing-burning falls.
-Salman Rushdie, Fury

the other parent

i went to micah's father's day ice cream special at his preschool as The Other Parent, one of the only women in a roomful of men. all the preschoolers sang a song about how they love daddy, and i cringed for micah's sake. i don't want to add negative charge to this whole paradigm problem in his life, but no matter how much i hide my chagrin, i'm sure he somehow perceives it. he was utterly distracted through the whole peformance, so i'm not even going to post the video of it. for once i was actually really grateful for his inability to focus, i hoped his disengagement would protect him from his feeling of alienation. he ran up to me in the audience right afterwards and was beaming to see me. he hugged me, i took pictures. at one point he said rather seriously, "i have a dad too. he's far away. he was mean to me and mommy when i was little. he's learning to be nice." i nodded placidly as i am wont to do when freaking out inside. i added, "i'm your parent too, you know that right?" I thought he wasn't listening, but then he surprised me by saying, "i have known my whole life that you are my other parent!" and looked at me impatiently, like duh.
which seems to me like a confirmation that a missing dad is so far, still just a label, not an actual emotional hole.

holy shit

it's all relative

From Jezebel:

Photoshop of Horrors

A retoucher for Maxim Mexico went a little loco on this model's waist. The thing about it is that it's not just offensive for like obvious objectification reasons (because really, only objects like action figures or Barbies could ever be proportioned like that), but it's also just a completely piss poor job with the "liquify" tool. I took it upon myself to "fix" her waist, using the same liquify filter in Photoshop.

http://jezebel.com/5013922/photoshop-of-horrors

what? what are you looking at?

how to take care of anteater pets

"You should take your anteater for a walk once a day. You must put them on a leash even though they are tame, they might get interested under cars and then you might not be able to get them out again or they might climb trees without permishion. Put trainer on them . Not whenever you take them out. It seems to be comfortable for them. Again if it is cold put a t-shirt on them just in case. ; ) Take them to meadows bird sancutaries, parks but becareful people might panic. It's alot quieter and calmer when you take them to a quiet place. You'll enjoy it more and so will your pet. There will be tons of people looking at you or talking to you, bothering you.

Food, food, food that's the tricky part with pets. Well I go out in the yard and look for ants (sometimes) or you can let them find ants themselves. It's better to let them do it, that way they don't get too lazy. I make soup for them (special soup: fruits , vegtables , ants , cheese. ) Usually I make some soup for them . They just adore advocadoes and blue cheese."

full article

empathetic astronomy

Astronomers Suggest Looking for Aliens That Have Already Found Us

hike

patrols things that grow

"A border patrol boat is an unusual boat that bumps other boats and makes them fly in the sky.

It patrols things that grow high up to the sky, they grow plants.

Border patrol boats have an unusual thing that they have jewelry to make necklaces and bracelets

and then they make glasses out of jewelry, and they make food and sweaters out of hay

then they make some heaters out of silver glasses"

-Micah's quote of the day

Oh, if only border patrol boats were guards of nature instead...